


with so much of my heart that none is left to protest

by thelilacfield



Series: there is no world where i am not yours [25]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Inheritance, Marriage of Convenience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:07:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28089759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thelilacfield/pseuds/thelilacfield
Summary: “Ms. Harkness made it clear in her will that to receive your inheritance you had to get married within six months of her death. I’m afraid it is a legally binding clause of her will.”“And what happens if I don’t get married?”“The money and the house and everything in it go to charity. But I don’t think it will be a problem for you, Ms. Maximoff. Your boyfriend is just downstairs.”
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Vision
Series: there is no world where i am not yours [25]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1859725
Comments: 5
Kudos: 84





	with so much of my heart that none is left to protest

**A/N:** AU-dvent day 15! The married for inheritance AU I've secretly always wanted! Happy one month until WandaVision release day!

I'm on Tumblr and Twitter **@mximoffromanoff** if anybody wants to chat about all things scarletvision! Enjoy, and please let me know with a comment if you do :)

* * *

"Hello, I'm looking for Wanda Maximoff?"

"This is she," Wanda says, nudging the fridge closed with her hip, hardly listening to the stuffy sound of the man's voice on the other end of the phone. She's listening for the sound of the shower running, wondering if she should hang up on this idiot, forgo having her coffee and slip under the spray with Vision.

"Good morning, Ms. Maximoff," comes the dull voice again, and she pours water over one of Vision's raspberry tea bags, wrinkling her nose faintly at the sweet smell that pervades her kitchen. "My name is Edmund Howard. I'm the executor of Agatha Harkness' estate." Wanda makes a non-committal noise into the phone, listening to the whine of the pipes through her walls. "I'm afraid I have tragic news for you, Ms. Maximoff. Ms. Harkness passed away last night."

"Oh dear." She immediately feels stupid for letting those words slip out, but she's not sure what else to say. It's clear from the man's grave tone that he thinks she'll be upset. Maybe he has the wrong number. She knows there are other Maximoffs in the world.

"I know this must be a very difficult time for you, Ms. Maximoff," he says, and she nods vaguely, as if he can see her. "But you're the sole beneficiary of your aunt's estate, and I would like you to come to my office so we can go over her assets. When would be convenient for you?"

"Excuse me?" Wanda asks, the spoon clanking against the side of her coffee mug. "I'm...my aunt?"

"Yes, Ms. Maximoff, Ms. Harkness was your great aunt by marriage," he says, and her hand drifts up to touch her mother's wedding ring around her neck. Her only family was the three people in an apartment in Sokovia - they never met anyone else and didn't care to. "She never had her own children and you are the youngest living descendant she has. For reasons beyond my knowledge, she has left you everything in her will." A chuckle, and he says, "Agatha always was a touch eccentric."

"So...she left me a house?" she asks, her hand stilling on the spoon in her coffee mug. The pipes whine on, the normal morning symphony, even though her life is changing through the nasally voice on the other end of the phone.

"An _estate_ , Ms. Maximoff," the lawyer says, evoking instant images of enormous manor homes and manicured emerald lawns and swimming pools with fountain features. "Really, we should not be discussing this over the phone. Would you be able to come into my office this afternoon?"

"I, um...sure," she says, her head spinning.

"Excellent," he says, and she's still staring down at the surface of Vision's cup of tea as the shower shuts off. "Your cooperation in this difficult time is much appreciated, Ms. Maximoff. Your aunt was a character we will all miss."

"Okay, um...thank you, Mr. Howard," she says, barely remembering his name. Her mind is spinning and blank, entirely unhelped by Vision drifting into her kitchen in only sweatpants, a towel around his neck, smiling at her. "I will come by around four. Thank you."

"What was that?" Vision asks, taking up his mug of tea, his eyes on her filled with the same heat she adores, the same heat that gazed up at her when she climbed on top of him last night.

"My aunt died," she says, and vaguely waves her phone. "My Great Aunt Agatha. That was her lawyer."

"I didn't even know you had a Great Aunt Agatha," he says.

"Neither did I." She pulls down a plate from the cupboard as her waffles pop out of the toaster, her coffee cup gently steaming where it's shoved aside. "But apparently she left me everything. An _estate_." Pouring syrup onto her waffles, she says, "I have to go see her lawyer this afternoon. I know we said we'd hang out, but-"

"I'll come with you," he says, and leans down to brush a kiss to her shoulder. "Then we can go get dinner like we planned, right?"

"Right," she says, and he smiles, another kiss brushed to her shoulder before he pulls away. She glances over at him and quietly asks, "Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Virginia ending it?" he asks, and she nods, biting her lip. She thought she'd find him in much worse shape when he texted to tell her his girlfriend had broken up with him. But it's been three days, every night of them spent in her apartment, and he seems fine without ever having told her the details. "No, I'm fine. Honestly, maybe it was about time."

"Come on, don't pretend to be strong for me," she says. "Embarrass yourself. Please. I sucked you off while crying after Simon dumped me."

"I'm sorry, but you may have to wait if you want something on that level of embarrassing to throw back in my face," he says, grinning, and she throws a crumpled up ball of kitchen towel at him. And he's moving towards her, leaning down to kiss her in that way that always makes all the breath rush out of her, his hand curling over her waist, crumpling the thin material of her pyjama shirt.

She runs her hands slowly down his bare chest, lingering touches, and when he pulls away his eyes are dark, and she's thrilling at how quickly she can get a response out of him. "I don't have to meet this guy until four," she says, and she's lowering herself to her knees, smirking up at him. "We have the whole morning."

" _Wanda_ -"

"Put that cup down first, Vizh," she says, and the clink of china on her countertops is far too loud. " _Carefully_. You've smashed enough of my dishes-"

"I didn't _expect_ you to _slap_ my _ass_ while I was washing plates-"

"And what about the wine glass?"

"Maybe you shouldn't bend me over counters that close to your drying rack-"

"You like being bent over."

And his hand strokes through her hair, a smile on his perfect mouth. "I like _you_ ," he whispers, and there's something golden dancing in the air between them.

She snuffs that out by pulling his waistband down and wrapping her hand around him. In the quiet morning moments, it's far too easy to lose sight of the fact that this is just sex.

* * *

Edmund Howard is just as stuffy as she expected him to be. His hair, his suit, and his face are all grey, and he gives her a tight smile when his perky receptionist lets her into his office. In his defence, perhaps he wasn't expecting a girl with her hair in braids, wearing her fuck buddy's green plaid shirt tied at the waist and ripped black jeans. A Starbucks cup in one hand, and the panini Vision bought her for lunch in the other. But she can't be ashamed that she's almost late when it was because she was having fantastic sex.

"A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Maximoff," he says, and holds out a stiff hand for her to shake. "Ms. Harkness always spoke highly of you. Her lovely accomplished niece."

"Accomplished?" she asks, arching an eyebrow. "I'm a bartender with a very expensive Psych degree I'm not using."

"Well, Ms. Maximoff, your bartending days are over," he says, and unfurls a long document across the table. There's a signature in her eyeliner, an extravagantly looping _Agatha Harkness_ , and she stares at this relic of an aunt she never knew. Wondering why her parents never told her. "As I told you on the phone, Ms. Harkness has left everything to you. That includes her estate and her money."

"I mean...when you say estate-"

"Ms. Harkness resided alone in her twenty-five acre estate in the Hamptons," he says, and she is hard-pressed to keep her jaw from dropping. "The house was recently valued at ninety-five million. Ms. Harkness' jewels and wardrobe are also yours, as well as cash assets of fifty million-"

"And she's left all this to _me_?" she gasps, and he just nods. "But I...I never even _met_ her. I'd never heard of my Great Aunt Agatha until today. I had a rich relative this whole time and no one told me?!"

"Ms. Harkness was a very private woman," he says. "And always an eccentric. She only told me of her late husband's family and its last surviving member a few weeks before her death."

"So...I'm rich now?" she asks softly. "I have an estate in the Hamptons and jewels and fifty million? It's that simple?"

"Well, Ms. Maximoff, I have told you that Agatha was an eccentric," he says, and he clears his throat. "There is one condition to you inheriting her assets."

"Name it." She's already excitedly thinking of what she can do with all that money. She could pay off her student loans. Pay off Vision's too, if he wanted. She could stop flirting with gross men for more tips and ending up sticky and smelling of vodka every night. She could go travelling, take time off to find herself, go back to school and get the qualification she needs to become a real therapist and start actually helping people.

"Ms. Harkness made it clear in her will that to receive your inheritance you had to get married within six months of her death," he says, and the bottom drops out of her stomach. "I know, Ms. Maximoff. I tried to talk her out of it, but she was insistent. Something about how she got her money from marrying a billionaire within six months of meeting him in the nineties, so her niece should have to do the same. I don't know, but I'm afraid it is a legally binding clause of her will."

"And what happens if I don't get married?" she asks.

"The money and the house and everything in it go to charity," he says, and he chuckles lightly. "But I don't think it will be a problem for you, Ms. Maximoff. Your boyfriend is just downstairs."

"He's not-" And then she cuts herself off. If she tells a lawyer Vision isn't her boyfriend, and whatever the legal term for someone she's just fucking, "Right, my boyfriend. So if I marry him, say, as soon as we can get a wedding license-"

"You will be the proud owner of an estate in the Hamptons," he says, and smiles. "You're a fortunate woman, Ms. Maximoff. Many girls would have been scrambling to find someone to marry within six months."

"Right," she says, and stands up, brushing herself down. "So, I...I better go and explain to my boyfriend what's going on. I'll call you, Mr. Howard."

"Please do," he says, and she walks out of his office. Vision is waiting for her in the white walls of the reception, idly flicking through a _Homes and Gardens_ magazine, and when he catches sight of her he lights up.

"Did it go alright?" he asks, and she just laughs. "Wanda?"

"I have a lot of explaining to do," she says, and holds out a hand to him. "Come on. Let's go get dinner."

* * *

"Wanda, we have to find you someone!" Vision insists as their steaming plates of pasta are set down in front of them. The candles burn down between them, and she stares at him. The way the golden flames reflect in his eyes, his fingers around the silver cutlery, his concern for her. "Maybe you could...I don't know, contact Sam again? You broke up very amicably."

"He's got a new boyfriend," she says, and she leans across the table to wrap her hand over his wrist, distracting him. "Vizh...what if _we_ did it? What if we got married?"

He chokes, and takes a long sip of water before he looks back up at her. "Wanda, you...you can't be serious."

"I'm deadly serious," she says, and he's staring at her, mouth slightly open. "Vizh, why would I want to run around New York looking for someone new? Why would I get back in touch with someone I broke up with for a reason? I...I have you."

"But we're not _dating_ , Wanda!" he hisses. "We're just sleeping together!"

"I've been sleeping with you whenever we're both single for four years, Vizh," she says, and reaches across the table to take his hand, running her fingers gently over the inside of his wrist, the flutter of his pulse. "My longest relationship was nine months. For better or worse, I've been more committed to you than anyone else."

"Wanda-"

"It won't be forever," she says. "My aunt was only married to her billionaire husband for a year before they got divorced and she came out fantastically. So we'd just have to stay together for a year, and then we can get divorced and stay friends."

"This is _crazy_ , Wanda-"

"I only have to do this one thing to be a millionaire and own an estate," she says, and she's sinking to one knee in front of him, and diners are turning around to look at them, delight dancing on strangers' faces. "Vision, be crazy with me."

He's gazing at her with something she can't read in his shining eyes, and he smiles slightly. "Do you even have a ring?"

She pulls a hair tie out of the pocket of her jeans and wraps it three times around his ring finger, smiling up into his eyes. "Marry me?" she asks softly. She means it to be teasing, a sparkling acknowledgement that they're doing this for a flighty reason. But it comes out so soft, and Vision is smiling at her, and the candles are flickering when he leans down to kiss her.

"Yes," he breathes onto her lips, and the restaurant erupts into applause as she wraps her arms around his neck and lets him pull her back onto her feet.

She marries him two weeks later. Her white lace dress was less than thirty dollars, her hair hastily curled an hour before she met Vision outside the city clerk's office. He's wearing the same suit he's worn to every formal occasion for the last four years, and when he unfurls his hand to show her matching gold bands she just beams.

The officiant gives some short speech to their few witnesses, and she just gazes at him. Even though it's a wedding for convenience, there's still a lump in her throat looking at the brightness of his eyes. Something in her still lurches when he breathes, "I do." Her hand is still shaking when she slides the ring onto his finger, and when he leans forward and kisses her as they're announced officially married she clings to him.

The night before her wedding, she slept in an apartment with a broken curtain rod and a temperamental stove. But the Uber away from their wedding pulls up outside a gorgeous green sprawl of an estate, and she can't stop herself exclaiming, "Holy _shit_!"

Vision - her husband, her _husband_ \- chuckles as he climbs out of the car, putting an arm around her and kissing her cheek. "This is all yours now," he says, and she turns to kiss him.

"Half of it is yours," she promises, the deal they've made. A year from today, they'll both sign divorce papers and walk away from their marriage. And she kisses him again to distract herself from the thought of how sad that's going to make her.

He carries her over the threshold of the house, their key turning smoothly in the lock the final sign that this isn't all some elaborate prank for some reality show. An enormous crystal chandelier hanging over a sweeping staircase greets them, and Vision wrinkles his nose. "I don't think your aunt had the best taste," he says, and she laughs.

"Twenty-five acres," she says, awed by her luck. "An outdoor _and_ an indoor swimming pool. Fifty rooms." And she looks at him, coyling toying with his tie, and asks, "Which one do you want to christen first?"

She spends her wedding night tangled around her new husband, doing the one thing they've always been good at. His head between her legs, her hands in his hair, his whimpers against her lips, his hips bucking beneath her. When they finally stop, it's almost dawn, and their clothes are crumpled across the house, and the oak stretch of the dining room table will never be the same again.

They watch the sunrise from a private sweep of beach, champagne glasses sparkling on the sand between them. He's wearing only his suit trousers, hastily belted, and his shirt is wrapped around her, the sand sticking to her bare legs. And he pours them each a glass and clinks his against hers. "To a mutually beneficial marriage," he says, and she smiles.

"To us," she says, and there's something weighted in her words. Something she distracts herself from by kissing him as the sun sends rays of gold shooting out over the sprawl of the horizon.

* * *

Marriage is the best thing that's ever happened to her. And she's had friends who got married say how difficult it was, how much trust and love had to be poured into it to make it work. But things are easy for her and Vision. When he goes to work, teaching the kids he loves so much, she stays in the estate, combing over options for going back to school. With so much money, it feels like the only limit is her imagination. She gets to play house with her best friend, greeting him when he comes home from work with long kisses and dinner in the oven.

Of course, it helps that with them living together they're having a spectacular amount of sex. Sleepy morning sex, his lips trailing down her stomach before either of them are really awake. Sex at night, slow and gentle and tender. Every room of the manor has heard her cry out his name. Their private stretch of beach left both of them with sand where sand should never be after a day spent down there. The swimming pools, both indoor and outdoor, have watched her throw bikini tops at him, him chasing her down across the pool and lifting her onto the side.

It's the quiet moments that change her. She's never seen him grading papers before, reading glasses pushed up his nose, the scratch of his pen the only sound. She's never watched him linger over cooking, tasting at every step of the process, brow adorably furrowed. They've never had moments where he turns on the record player and pulls her out of her seat to dance, swaying her into him, a soft smile on his lips.

The realisation that she's in love with him creeps up on her. Until she wakes up on the morning they've been married for six months, halfway through the year they agreed on, and catches him watching her. And he leans across their bed to kiss her and breathe, "You are so beautiful in the morning."

It slices right through her, and she stumbles out of bed and hastily into workout clothes, leaving him with a perfunctory peck and a, "I'm going for a run." The streets are empty but for other joggers, and with every smack of her feet into the sidewalk the realisation drums harder into her. Her heart beats with a pattern of _you love him you love him you love him_ and she has to stop and compose herself, the urge to cry swelling up in her chest.

And maybe marriage is the worst thing that's ever happened to her. Because it's forced her to confront the reality of four years of just sex, made her realise that it was never just sex, made her see through every break-up. He was always the one she ran to, never the boys and girls between him. She is so in love with him, and she's ruined everything.

When she gets back to the estate, he's cooking breakfast. Beating pancake batter while bacon pops and crackles in a pan, and her smoothie and coffee are waiting for her, and she's blinking back tears at how sweet he is. She's going to lose him, lose this, lose _them_. And he looks up at her, eyes full of concern, and crosses the room in three long strides to cradle his face between his hands. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she insists, but her voice is high-pitched with trying not to cry, and she couldn't more clearly be lying. His eyes are searching her face for an answer, and she bats him away, "Vizh, I'm _fine_."

"Wanda, come on, we've known each other since we were eighteen, we're _married_ , I know something isn't right," he says softly, and he's too kind. He's too much, and she wants to fall into his arms and kiss him again, make that same wonderful mistake for the thousandth time. "Honey-"

" _Don't_ ," she breathes, and it's jagged with a sob that slips out, and he frantically smooths away the tears as fast as they fall. "I'm so stupid, Vizh. We should get divorced now. You can have the house if you want, I don't care, I-"

"I don't _want_ to get divorced," he says, and somehow he's softer than before. He lifts her hand to his lips and kisses each individual finger. "Wanda, do you know what happened when Virginia broke up with me?"

"You're really telling me this _now_?"

"She told me I was so obviously in love with you, and it was past time to tell you," he says, and she pauses. The whole world pauses, leaving only the shallow rise and fall of her chest, his eyes on her, his gentle smile. "And when I came over, I was going to tell you right then. But then you started taking my clothes off, and, well, we...I became distracted."

"What are you saying?" she asks, and he smiles.

"Wanda, darling, I'm saying that I want to stay your husband even after the year is over," he says. "I know that we didn't get married in the most conventional way. But I don't want to walk away from this. I love you."

"You _do_?" she asks, breathless and hopeful, and he nods. "Vizh, I-"

"I should have told you long ago," he says, and he's tucking her hair behind her ear, smiling at her with eyes brighter than the sun. "But we've never been good at talking-"

"We talk _all the time_ -"

"Not about us," he says. "If we talked about us I would have told you that the first time I saw you in the dorms you took my breath away. I would have asked you out for dinner after the first time we had sex, when that college idiot dumped you and you turned up at my door crying." His hands tighten on her face and he says, "But I'm talking now. I'm telling you that I've been in love with you since I was eighteen. I'm sorry for being so slow on the uptake. If you still want to split up, then-"

"I love you too, you fucking _idiot_ ," she squeaks, and kisses him.


End file.
